 "Numaligarh Refinery")
Indian refiners processed lower amounts of crude in April, provisional government data made public on Thursday showed, with throughput hitting a five-month low in barrel-per-day terms due to ongoing maintenance.
Refinery throughput in April fell 3.8% year-on-year to 5.07 million barrels per day (bpd), or 21.5 million tonnes.
In March, crude oil processed at 23 million tonnes was the highest since Reuters records going back to 2009.
"For the first time in 2023, Indian refiners saw some maintenance-driven downturn as CDUs at the Numaligarh and Mumbai refinery were down in May, bringing overall refinery runs lower after a string of months when utilization rates were higher than 100%," said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at Kpler.
Numaligarh refinery, which was shut down for maintenance in the last week of March and has been restarting operations a unit at a time since May 15, also reported a fire incident at its hydrocracker unit last month.
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"Refinery runs will be curtailed further as the Bina refinery's 156 kbd primary distillation is down from mid-June to mid-July," Katona said, adding that there is residual maintenance in smaller refineries.
Natural gas output was down 2.9% to 2.74 billion cubic metres year-on-year, while crude oil production fell 3.5% to 2.38 million tonnes, the data showed.
Separate preliminary data showed consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, eased 0.3% year-on-year to 18.41 million tonnes in April, also retreating over 10% from the record highs seen in March powered by robust economic activity.
India slightly decreased its Urals oil buying in April, compared to record imports in March, accounting for roughly 60% of Urals seaborne cargoes in April from some 65% in March, Refinitiv Eikon data showed and traders said.
